


The Melting Boy

by rawr_balrog



Category: AFI
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-02-23
Updated: 2011-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:25:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rawr_balrog/pseuds/rawr_balrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was mugged during the brisk pre-dawn hours of October 27th, on some random street corner in downtown Philadelphia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You land as lightly as the new snow, cinematic, onto the melting boy and melt away.

I was mugged during the brisk pre-dawn hours of October 27th, on some random street corner in downtown Philadelphia. I had been wandering around the city after all the exhibits closed, looking for a coffee shop or a vegan-friendly twenty four hour diner, mostly trying to avoid going back to the worst hotel in the history of the universe. If nothing else, this trip had proven to me that I could never do Smith’s job. Irresponsible as he came off, somehow, Jade’s brother always managed to find nice, clean, well-managed hotels in distant cities none of us had ever seen, not to mention restaurants with food we were all willing to eat.

They had been following me for a few blocks. I wasn’t worried. I had about twenty pounds on the taller one, and they both had the gangly, almost unhealthy looks of teenage boys who had grown too quickly for their coordination or even their bodies to keep up. I had glanced at them periodically through the reflections in dark windows. They were slouchy and looked disreputable, too-big clothing and shadows in their eyes that I couldn’t quite attribute to the fact that it was almost three am.

I had stopped at a corner when they finally approached me, waiting on the light to change so that I could cross. The streets were desolate, but I obeyed traffic laws anyway. After all, the last thing I wanted was to get run over by some drunk driver in some godforsaken neighborhood like this, all alone on the other side of the country. I was leaning against the pole, my hair and face obscured by my bright pink hoodie, my arms crushed against my chest to ward off the cold, when they glanced at one another meaningfully and then met my eyes, skipping toward me and pulling wicked handguns out of their pants, the chrome gleaming in the bright moonlight.

I think my only thought then was a resigned, “I knew this was a bad fucking idea.” I wondered if I had enough in my wallet to pay them off, or if they would recognize me. (They didn’t.) When they got closer and I could see them better, I knew there was no way out. On some level—the one that wasn’t reeling that I was actually about to die—I actually felt sorry for them. They reminded me of that Rilke poem: “His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and beyond the bars, no world.”

I guess, in a way, three lives ended that night. But these were just _kids._

It was, at least, relatively quick. I count myself lucky for that. They bounded toward me, posturing aggressively, but with terror in their eyes that belied their attempt. I’m not totally sure how things escalated, but they froze for an instant when they got closer. The fag in pink was a lot more intimidating up close, I guess. The little one, his eyes widened and he looked up at me and I thought he might run away, but then his tall friend started forward, and the shrimp panicked, and when he reflexively squeezed the trigger, the bullet flew right into my eye.

Then it was a haze of pain, my knees on the cold ground, a fetal position, clutching my face, gravel digging into my palm, and an inconsolable groan welling up from somewhere inside of me. Beyond me, like headlights fighting against thick autumn fog, like the roar of a mudslide on a mountain ten miles away, there was loud swearing, hysterical hitched voices, gasping breaths, and prayers.

Then one of them, I don’t know which one, took control. He said, “Okay, okay, shut up! We’ll fix this, we’ll just—oh god!” Something cold and cylindrical pressed against the back of my head, pinning me to the ground. A thunderous clap, agony flooded my nervous system, and suddenly my body was no longer mine.

Neither one dared to move as I cooled on the pavement, blood seeping out of my head, matting my hair and pooling beneath me. Each boy’s diaphragm was tense and still, gun still pressed against my body’s head, goose pimples rising on frightened flesh, wide eyes fixed on my carnage. Even the dust motes must have frozen hanging in the air, waiting as all of the residue from my life dissipated.

Eventually, when the blood slowed and congealed, my pale flesh starkly gray and sallow against my bright pink hoodie and the dark, growing stain that marred it, the taller one dropped the gun and, with the same hand, rolled me over onto my back, so that my single remaining eye gaped blindly at the stars in the black sky.

Carefully, the smaller one knelt down beside his friend and reached over, unsticking my bloody hair from the side of my face. “Oh,” he gasped, “oh, fuck, what are we going to do?” His fingers brushed along my jaw and lightly prodded the edge of the maw where the bullet had stolen my left eye. His hand came away wet. “Shit, Jesus, fuck,” he gasped, swallowing hard against the bile that rose in his esophagus.

The other one sat back on his heels, eyes wide, pallor white, staring at the weapon on the sidewalk, and at the violent blood spatter that covered his hand, dotting his arm and even, unknown to him, his face. “We have to get rid of it, come on, we can’t leave it.” He drew a shaky breath, then picked up his abandoned gun and scrubbed frantically at it with the edge of his jacket. “Where’s your car?”

“Right around the corner. We can…” He broke off and gulped again. “We can carry it there. Okay.” He reached over gingerly and patted me down with both hands, then pulled my wallet out of my back pocket.

“Dude!”

“What!? It’s what we came for isn’t it? Shit!”

“Fine, I’m sorry, okay? Fuck.” He sighed and ran a bloody hand through his hair. “Let’s just do this, okay? We have to get it the fuck away from us!”

“Okay! God, fuck!” He covered his eyes, forgetting that his fingers were covered in my blood until it smeared across his forehead. “Let’s just go. Oh my god, I want to die. I hate this.” He stuck my wallet between his teeth and grabbed me under the armpits, hauling me up onto his chest. My head lolled back, bloody and cold, onto his shoulder, single eye staring blankly, emptily up past his cheek. He gagged visibly, choking it down with effort. The taller one stood up and grabbed my body by the legs, and together they managed to haul me to the car and stuff me in the cramped trunk.

They drove east in silence until they reached the banks of the Delaware River. They chucked the guns first, and then tore the bloody carpets out of the car trunk and got rid of those too. Finally, they filled my pockets with stones and waded out into deep water, releasing my dead body into the swelling, murky current.

After that, only signs of my presence in the city were an open suitcase in a dingy hotel room, hidden behind a “do not disturb” sign hanging from the door handle, and a pool of coagulated blood, drying slowly a few blocks away. And since I wasn’t due back in Oakland until after Halloween, no one would miss me.


	2. Inside a crumbling effigy, so dies all innocence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Inquirer is real, but the article is fake.

It was actually Jade who first suspected that something may have been wrong, far earlier than I would ever have dared to hope. He finally acknowledged that the ill, twisting feeling in his gut was something more than mild food poisoning or post-breakup nausea at exactly 8:59pm on the evening of October 30th. At the point of his realization, he was surrounded by pumpkin guts at his kitchen table, half-assing the very first jack-o-lantern he ever had to carve by himself and glancing repeatedly at the thready pumpkin entrails his fingers had left on the surface of his phone.

The two texts he had sent me that morning had gone unanswered. When he had called later the same evening, my phone, tangled in weeds at the bottom of a river thousands of miles away, had gone straight to voicemail.

When he couldn’t take it anymore, Jade threw his knife onto the table and stood up so suddenly that he upended his chair. The knife skittered across the dark wood and onto the floor, joining corner-dwelling dust bunnies that Jade had uncharacteristically failed to clean up. He ignored both the knife and the dust; instead he snatched up his phone and, after a few long strides into the next room, threw himself down onto his couch, flicked his cell phone to life, and speed-dialed his brother.

The phone rang once before Smith picked it up. “Yo, Jade,” he answered, “Are you…”

Jade cut him off. “Hey, you don’t happen to have Dave’s number by any chance?” He said this quickly, on half a breath, while shifting deeper into the cushions as if he were trying to disappear into the crevices between them.

I love Jade’s couch. I must have taken a hundred naps there, spent a hundred nights on it, lying awake and breathing him in, studying the minute details of his everyday existence, wishing for things that now I will never have.

“Yeah…?” Smith answered slowly, letting his deep frown echo in his tone. “Why don’t you?” There was a crash in the background, and raucous laughter, which faded as he moved into another room.

Jade tried to roll his eyes, but the affected annoyance didn’t register in the rest of him. Even pillowed on his absurdly comfortable sofa, all of his lines were ramrod straight and tense. “No, I mean, his hotel. I can’t reach him.” His eyes flicked around the dark room, avoiding everything, studying nothing. He opened his mouth to continue, but reconsidered and snapped it shut.

“Bro,” Smith replied in an artificially weary tone only little brothers can achieve, “he’s probably just pissed at you ‘cause you ditched him.”

“He is not! And I didn’t…”

“You totally did. Whatever. If it’s that big a deal, just drive up there and meet him at the airport. Call Adam. He’s giving him a ride. I’m sure he’d like the company waiting around for his flight to get in.”

Jade sighed, but didn’t answer. The light from the kitchen splashed across his face, the only illumination in an otherwise unlit room, glittering in his pupils and casting shadows in his laugh lines and the faint creases around his eyes.

In his mind, I would return on a sunny afternoon two days later, with one bag slung over my shoulder, and together we would retrieve my biggest suitcase from baggage claim. He would look at me slyly and make fun of me because I always over pack, but would take both my suitcase and my carry-on from me in silent penance. And then I would look at him and understand that everything wasn’t quite okay, and I would buy him his favorite dairy ice cream and help him forget about things for a little while.

Suddenly, no matter what I had longed for in my desperate final moments, nose scratching on the rough pavement, face and hands and world slicked with blood, I was consumed with relief that he had bailed on me, that he had not been there to hear the noises I had made, to watch me break, to die in front of me. I wondered how deep his wrinkles would furrow, how many years he would lose, by the time we were finished with all of this.

“Why did you bail anyway?”

Jade breathed deeply and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t even know.” He swallowed, and then craned his neck to look at the moon hanging outside his window, which shone through a thin veil of clouds. “I was just being stupid, I guess. I was gonna go meet him out there, but…”

“But he’s screening your calls,” his brother finished. “Listen, call Adam. Dave’s flight gets in on the first at some point in the afternoon. Then you can apologize for blowing him off and he’ll stop being a princess. Problem solved.”

“Yeah, thanks Smiff,” Jade said, reluctance weighing his voice down. He snapped the phone shut and dropped it on the ground. In the kitchen, a hollow, half carved pumpkin sneered at its own insides, which lay crusting in a heap next to it. Jade slung his forearm over his eyes. He stayed in that spot all night, and slept fitfully.

 

> PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER  
>  _October 29, 2010  
>  **Blood**  
>  (continued from A3)_
> 
>  _…everyone. Nobody would do anything like that. I’m just glad my grand-babies are okay.”_
> 
>  _Local residents are getting nervous after a reported surge in gang activity in the surrounding areas over the last couple months. 17 year old Gabriela Mendez attends lives only a block away from where the blood was found._
> 
>  _“It’s kind of scary. This was always a good neighborhood but now my brothers walk me to work.”_
> 
>  _The city’s murder rate had been on an overall decline but the last few months have seen a change in the trend. Authorities say they are stepping up security measures to combat the recent shift._
> 
>  _“We’re increasing our patrols and we set up a hotline for people to report any concerns. Public safety is our top priority.”_
> 
>  _Authorities also urge residents to use caution and not to take matters into their own hands._
> 
>  _“Keep an eye out and be careful, but please leave matters to the proper authorities. Perpetrators of gang violence usually carry weapons. Watch your children and try not to let them play outside after dark.”_
> 
>  _If anyone knows any information regarding the events in the early hours of October 27 surrounding the blood found, witnesses are urged to come forward or call our anonymous tip line.  
> _


	3. I don't know the first thing about love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the previous chapters began with AFI lyrics, this one uses "Moving Mountains" by Thrice.

_I speak in many tongues of many men,  
argue with angels, and I always win,  
but I don't know the first thing about love._

-

Once upon a time, in the suburbs of a city surrounded by old things and new things, buried in ice and leaves and absence of time, there lived a little boy who was made to face the infinite reality of finite nature.

He was a happy boy—no, not happy. He was satisfactory. Always enough, never too much. He woke up at seven o’clock every morning, ate lucky charms with two percent milk, and walked to school with the neighborhood children and a chaperone, except for when it snowed. On those days, his father would wake up extra early to dig the car out. When the snow came in angrily off the lake, his dad would climb up onto the roof and dig the snow off of that, too. On mornings like that, the boy would wake up early also, and spend the hours waiting for sunrise with his nose and hands pressed against the cold glass of his second-story window, studying the snowflakes, watching them clump together.

On winter school nights, he would wear his pajamas inside-out and backwards, spin around three times, and then throw himself to his knees to pray extra hard for snow to bury the school. When this inevitably failed—the snow plows in Rochester, New York, after all, got a lot of practice—his father would drive him to school, where the boy would join his classmates in hunting down the person who didn’t complete the snow-ritual and ruined it for everybody.

On summer afternoons, he would race the neighborhood children to the tops of trees, all except for Rachel-on-the-corner, who took gymnastics and could win every time, whom they didn’t let play because it wasn’t fair. Then they would swing down from the branches, leaping from as high as they dared into the grass below. Or else he would lie on the hill with his best friend Jimmy two houses down, and they would watch the clouds shrink and the shadows grow, and swear they could see their skin darkening in the heat and the sun right before their very eyes.

On bright summer nights, he would go stargazing with his father, who would tell him all of the stories of the hunter and his hounds, the bear, the queen, the king, the twins. Or maybe he would catch fireflies in a mason jar, fill it with grass and a little bit of water and pretend that he had his very own night sky on his bedside table.

And on all the other nights, whether it was rainy or cold or a school night, he would lay in bed, tenting the covers with his feet, and he and Ursa Major—the teddy bear his father had given him for his birthday when he turned five, and whose name had changed no fewer than four times—would pretend they were runaway slaves, or Indians, or Boxcar Children, and that they couldn’t hear the stern, hushed voices or the tense silence.

And then, on the day he turned exactly six and a half, while doing addition on his math test, the guidance counselor Mrs. Gardener would come into their classroom and whisper something to the teacher, and then the boy would be excused from school for the rest of the day.

Two days after that, the boy would, for the first time, be wearing all black, while staring into a casket, into the face of something he would spend the rest of his life struggling to comprehend. Then he would be made to sit in silence, listening to words like faith, eternity, and love, wondering what on earth this had to do with the fact that he and his mother were now alone.

Seven and a half short months later, everything would be in boxes, all the walls would be white, and he and his mother would board the boy’s very first airplane to leave everything behind. The night before they left, the boy would go out back with his father’s old lighter, and would set Ursa Major on fire. After it had disintegrated into ashes and blackened plastic, he would realize that the flames and the smoke had not carried the ghost of his old friend to the place his father was, to keep him company in heaven until they found one another again. They _wouldn’t_ find one another again. Ursa Major was just gone.

His _father_ was just gone.

And maybe, if he closed his eyes and tried hard enough, he could find the zipper that held his soul together. And maybe, if he unzipped it and let all of its contents fly out like the ash from Ursa Major’s stuffing into the wind, he would be gone, too, and he wouldn’t have to go to California. He wouldn’t have to leave his best friend, his grandparents, his teachers behind. He wouldn’t be in a class full of strangers. He wouldn’t have to think about the fact that everyone back home was slowly forgetting about him. He wouldn’t have to spend the whole ride there hoping the airplane would just fall out of the sky.

Fast forward.

He’s in his mid-thirties. Airplanes have become a regular part of his life, now. So have crossing continents and oceans, and leaving things behind. He can barely remember his life in Rochester, or his father’s face, or the smell of the leather seats in his father’s truck. He has a different name now, and a different father, but they don’t stargaze or shovel snow. He doesn’t eat lucky charms anymore, or milk. His hair is a different color, and his skin is now many different colors. He even has a new half-brother.

He has a new best friend, too. His name isn’t Jimmy, but it does start with a “J.” They don’t watch their skin tan or burn in the sun. Actually, he avoids the sun as much as possible now, a feat which, as the days grow shorter and the air grows cooler, is getting easier.

He’s sitting in the airport now, actually. It is October 25th, at about one o’clock in the afternoon. He’s in one of those hard plastic chairs, leaning forward on his knees and staring at two boarding passes, one of which is now utterly useless. In his other hand is his cell phone, to which his eyes keep flicking, hoping it will buzz or light up or something, but seeing as how first class begins boarding in four minutes and thirty seconds, he has just about given up hope.

He thinks about turning around and going home, spending Halloween at home giving out candy and watching horror movies, but the defeat inherent in that decision turns his stomach. And he thinks about his best friend, the owner of the other boarding pass, lying alone in his bedroom with his eyes squeezed shut, covers pulled over his head, wracked with loneliness and failure and guilt, and he wonders if he even figures into his thoughts, or if his friend is just drowning in a hundred what-ifs and whys and hows. Or maybe he’s staring at his computer, watching his screensaver flit through each and every photo he has ever taken of her, remembering all of her effort and her laughter and her small wrists and shoes.

And then the boy wonders if his friend may have shown up if he were small and blonde and female, with young eyes and a fresh face. That last thought flutters in his chest and behind his eyes, and he grits his teeth, and with grim, furious determination he stands up and slings his bag over his shoulder, and tears the spare boarding pass into six different pieces. He wants to say, “god, I was doing this for you, you know,” but he can’t, because he’s alone, so instead he just says, “fuck it,” upgrades to first class, and gets in line to board.

As the airplane climbs away into the sky, he has to remind himself that this is not goodbye; that he _will_ see this place again, and for the first time in years, he wonders whatever became of his birth father when he died all those years ago.

-

 _but all other things shall fade away.  
While love stands alone and still holds sway,  
all other things shall fade away  
into the ground, into the gray._


	4. On the way, I saw five hours of sleep, but your fire makes it all worthwhile.

Jade drove up to Adam’s the next day. He stumbled out his front door early that morning, shrugging and twisting the kinks out of his neck and shoulders all the way to the car. He stopped for gas right before getting on the freeway and up to the very last spot. While the gas pumped, he leaned back against his car, hood pulled up, thick sweatpants pooling over his feet, and clutched a paper travel mug close to his face as he watched the traffic fly by.

The afternoon was unusually cold and damp; the sky was overcast and the air thick with the promise of rain. I couldn’t help but wonder if Jade, curled around his black coffee and bundled up unusually comfortably for someone as precise as he generally is, felt even half as cold as had become constant for me. My old friend was pale, choking on something unintelligible, a lump in his throat and a shadow under his eyes that bespoke more than plain lack of sleep.

He had barely slept the night before, curled up uncomfortably on his sofa. He had started awake more than once, reaching out and glancing around for someone who wasn’t there. Whether he was looking for me or her, I can’t be sure, but the third time he sat up, eyes flicking around the dark room as if his demons would materialize then and there, I threw myself to my nonexistent knees beside him and cried, “I’m not here! Fuck, I’m not anywhere anymore. I’m rotting at the bottom of a river. God, I’m so sorry, I don’t _exist._ You will never see me again.”

I don’t know why I shouted at him. The barrier between us, between the living and the dead, no matter what the intensity of our relationship may have been, curls around me, impenetrable and indomitable. Even in that moment, willing myself to forget, to close my eyes and leap the chasm that had opened between us, I was acutely aware of that distance. However, as hopeless as it seemed, I swear he heard my voice. As he blinked and scrubbed his eyes, dizzy with the last grasping tendrils of his nightmares, I could almost taste my name on his tongue. It lit my—my _ether,_ my nothing, whatever I am composed of, with the thrill of hope, and I could feel the warmth of my joy filling the room. This was quickly doused, though. In the second he would have said it, he shook his head and rubbed his eyes and muttered, “God, I’m fucking crazy,” lied back down, and pulled the throw blanket over his eyes.

Now, as he watched cars fly by and the gas gauge tick higher, I wondered if my half-perceived presence, my frantic, hopeless plea, echoed in his head like the last threads of memory from the delirium of fever. _You will never see me again,_ I had said. Standing alone in the cold under the dark sky, cloaked in thick, sticky silence, heavy with guilt, I was sure that he knew, and that he was counting the hours until he had to face this inevitable fact.

When he got on the road at long last, he drove like he did when he was sixteen and had a cop in the next seat. He turned off his radio, drove exactly the speed limit the whole way, checked all his mirrors, and otherwise sat perfectly still, staring straight ahead. Wrapped around the steering wheel, his knuckles were white, and lines of tension and veins trailed up his forearm, complementing the tautness running through his jaw, neck, and shoulders.

Jade had always borne things silently, stoically. He could make himself ill over guilt and stress. When he got kicked out of school, he was in bed for a week, head pounding and stomach roiling, until at last his old band-mates kicked his door open, dragged him out of bed, and told him to stop jerking off and get his GED. Now, the first prodding fingers of migraine were creeping up his spinal column into the base of his head and down into his uneasy stomach, and before he had even gotten halfway up the freeway, he had cracked all four windows, letting the cold autumn air pour in like a deluge. It welled up around him, flooding his lungs, sticking like shards of ice in his knuckles. I knew that when he finally climbed out of his car in Adam’s driveway, his tension would be roiling in his stomach and pounding behind his eyes.

In the mean time, though, he breathed deeply: in and out, through the nose, out the mouth. Breathing was the only tiny bit of yoga that she had ever been able to instill in him. I had always gotten on his case about it, elbowing him in the ribs with a cruel half-smile, asking when he was going to put on his stretchy pants and light his incense and fold himself into quarters, and honestly, I was probably half the reason he never picked it up. As much as it scalds me to admit that she had been right about anything, though, it would have been good for him. No more tension headaches and stiff necks and becoming ill; he could breathe and bend, and with every ‘om’ and exhalation, a little bit of her—a little bit of me—would cease to torment him. Instead, as the miles wore on, with every breath he replaced the smog of LA in his lungs with the bite of gasoline and the crisp, plummeting seasons, and tried and failed to replace his fraying nerves with the acute itch of goose pimples raising the fine hairs on his arm.

When he finally did reach Adam’s, it was mid afternoon. Our friend answered the door in dark blue plaid pajama pants, one hand scratching his ear, the other resting on the brass door handle. “Jade?” he said. “Dude, what are you doing here?” He yawned widely and then stepped aside and let Jade in. “Not that I mind, but I mean, it’s a long drive.”

Jade shrugged, pointedly avoiding Adam’s eyes, gaze stiff, wide, and unfocused in some random corner. “I uh,” he swallowed hard, and dumped his messenger bag on the floor against the wall. “I’ve gotta… um, I have to talk to Dave ASAP. Sorry, I should have called.” He shrugged, then grimaced and rubbed his shoulder, which was knotted and rock hard.

“That’s fine,” Adam said. He jerked his head suggestively and led Jade down the hall. “You do know that his flight doesn’t get in until tomorrow, right?”

Adam’s kitchen was bright. The yellow walls were the same shade that had inhabited his mother’s kitchen. Our first real “band practice” had been there, back when AFI was still in theoretical stages. His mother had given us iced tea, and Adam had drummed on the counter with wooden spoons. We didn’t really know one another. Would I have done anything differently, then, had I known that our new friendship would last until the day I died? That we wouldn’t be parted by miles or months until I passed beyond the circles of the living realm?

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Jade said, slouching after Adam. “But I figured if I didn’t come right away, if I gave myself a day to think about it, I’d chicken out.”

Adam pressed a coffee mug into Jade’s hands and then sat down at the table. “Yeah, well, you did ditch him.”

Jade’s eyes became steel for half a second, knuckles whitening around the mug. “I did not ditch him. Why does everyone keep saying that!” He deflated a little, and broke his gaze off from Adam’s and instead studied his reflection in his black coffee. “I mean, Dave knows that, right?”

Adam sighed. “Well, yeah. You know how he is.” He waved his hand dismissively and took a long sip from his mug. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I would.” Jade brought the mug up to his face, letting the steam and the earthy scent curl around him. The afternoon sun, veiled by sheer gray clouds, broke through the window and played in his hair and across the table between them. “I was going to go join him, but he’s screening my calls.”

“That’s weird.”

Jade sighed. “I know! Passive aggression I get, but silence?” He closed his eyes and pressed the hot mug against his forehead and the bridge of his nose. “All the other times he was pissed at me, he just bitched me out.”

A pause, then Adam exhaled and put his mug down firmly. “Listen. I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up about this, but…”

“Because,” Jade broke in. “I dunno, I just have a bad feeling.” His eyes were wide, earnest, pained, and something else I couldn’t articulate. It was then, in the face of his terrified, hopeless determination, that I knew for sure he had heard me. I could practically hear it in the air, hanging between us: _Never again, never again. God, I’m so sorry._

“But your _bad feeling_ probably has more to do with you-know-who than Dave or anything else.” Adam’s tone was full of cool, inarguable, consoling logic. Jade flickered. “Listen, dude, you need to chill out. He’s probably just making you sweat. We’ll see him tomorrow, and you can carry his bags or something, and he’ll forget all about it.”

“Yeah,” Jade said. He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his finger in his black coffee, which was suddenly stone cold. “Tomorrow.”


	5. I haven't said a word in weeks, 'cause they've been keeping me from you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another "Thrice" chapter. This time, the lyrics come from "A Song for Milly Michelson."

As I am sure you have all guessed, I did not get off my plane that afternoon.

More accurately, I did not get off _any_ plane that afternoon.

Jade and Adam had arrived at the airport an hour early. They got takeout falafels from a stand in the middle of the food court and split a gigantic Auntie Ann’s lemonade, camped out on three hard plastic chairs. They had finished all of that and were on their second Starbucks refill by the time either one had the courage to vocalize the issue at hand. The wide glass windowpanes were bright and blinding with orange light, and deep shadows stretched and pooled in the corners and under chairs and tables.

I wondered if my voice inside Jade’s head was taunting: “Never again. I left you behind because you left me behind. I went on to the next world without you because _you weren’t there_.”

What fears manifested in him, filled his lungs like cigarette smoke, creeping like carcinogens through his cells and his blood? Did the nightmares from two nights ago replay in his waking mind? During the hours he had lain awake on Adam’s hard guest bed, how closely had he guessed to the truth? With each plane arrival, each gate that opened no matter what the origin of the flight, I could hear his silent mantra, could see how his lips almost moved, how in the strength of his prayer he almost whispered, “please, this one, just get off, please.”

Beside him, Adam was getting fidgety. An hour after my flight arrived and left again, he had finally given in to worry, and by now, he had fallen into a nervous pattern of flipping his phone open and shut, willing each motion to inspire a text message, a call, anything. His eyes flicked between Jade and the ticket counter.

At last, he stood up, and plastered a wide smile onto his face. “Maybe it’s nothing,” he said brightly, startling Jade violently out of his head. “Maybe he switched his flight, and forgot to call us. Maybe he just missed it.”

Jade nodded shakily, but didn’t say anything. His eyes were wide, glued onto Adam’s like a lost kid at the beach, staring at the lifeguard who had promised to find his parents.

Adam nodded again, but when he turned his back to Jade, he shook his head and straightened his shoulders, willing the smile that had faded from his lips to appear in his eyes and brighten his voice. When he got to the counter, the girl behind it was leaning over, all her weight resting on her elbows, staring dazedly at the clock on the wall. “Can I help you?” she said, snapping her gum lightly. “You can’t buy tickets here, only upgrade or check in.”

“I know,” Adam said, squinting pleasantly at her so that the corners of his eyes creased and dimples appeared on his cheeks. Unfailingly polite. He had always been. He was always my mother’s favorite of my friends because of it. When we got stuck in London a couple years ago, he was the only one who could convince the airport to comp us all hotel rooms for the night. “I’m waiting for a friend,” he said. “He didn’t get off his flight. Is there a way you can tell me if he’s on another one?”

She stood up and chewed on her lip. “Um,” she said, looking down at the floor as she considered. “I’m not sure. I can’t just give out information, right?” The girl glanced around like she was trying to catch someone’s eye, but there was nobody around. She sighed visibly and ran her fingers through her straight blonde hair, glancing out the window at the setting sun.

“Come on,” Adam said. “He should have been here hours ago, and my friend over there…” he nodded jerkily in Jade’s direction, “has been freaking out since yesterday. What am I supposed to do, fly out to Pennsylvania myself and just hope I run into him?”

“Uh, do you have his info?” she said after a second. “I can try calling the other airport and ask if he claimed his ticket or whatever.” She blushed and glanced down at her hands. “Sorry, I’m kinda new at this.”

“No, no,” Adam said with a heavy, relieved sigh. “That’s perfect. That’s all I’m asking. I have it here.” He shoved a creased, folded up piece of computer paper into her hand. “His name is Dave—uh, David Marchand. That’s the flight he was supposed to take.”

He stepped back and crossed his arms, averting his eyes politely while she made the call. He seemed to be pretending not to be listening, but behind him, Jade was leaning forward in his seat, straining his ears for any hint of my name.

The girl looked down, her hair obscuring her face as she talked. “Hi,” she chirped, “this is Samantha from Oakland International. I’m with a guest who says his friend never got off—What? Oh, David Marchand? That’s M-A-R-C-H-A-N-D, yeah. Yeah, I’ll wait.” She played with her hair for a few seconds before perking up. “What?” she said, “Did he cancel it? And he didn’t buy another one either? … Okay. Okay, thanks anyway.” She hung up the phone and looked at Adam apologetically. “Sorry, but your friend never showed up to use his ticket. I guess he’s still in Philadelphia?”

Adam’s gracious smile flickered and died. His eyes flicked down and to the right before meeting hers again. “Yeah, I guess. Thanks.” The girl smiled apologetically and then returned to her work. Adam stood at the counter, staring at the gray plastic surface for exactly one minute and forty seven seconds before he gathered the courage to return to Jade.

When he got there, he sat down next to Jade without saying anything. Jade, for his part, had straightened up, tension lining his back. The muscles in his back that supported his perfect posture were rigid and rock hard. The tendons in his neck stood at attention. When Adam sat down and refused to look at him, he didn’t move. He sat perfectly still and watched him carefully in his peripheral vision. The harsh orange sun that framed them was fading, shadows deepening and the surrounding light becoming yellow, artificial, and harsh as the overhead fluorescents became dominant.

After a horribly long stretch of full silence, punctuated by careful breaths and overactive—and over _accurate_ in Jade’s case—imagination, Adam finally drew a deep and steady breath. “Hey, Jade, uh…” he trailed off and rubbed his face with both hands as if to wake himself from a late afternoon nap. “I’m sorry. Do you have the number for his hotel?”

Jade swallowed hard, gritted his teeth, and whispered to himself, “I expected this. I expected this.” Then he shook his head, more for his own benefit than Adam’s, and said, “No. Smiff—uh, Smith does.” His voice was not steady at all, but it was careful, as if he were putting every effort into eliminating the audible tremors in his tone. “I’ll call him and ask.”

He pulled his iPhone out of his jeans pocket with a steady hand, but he held it with white knuckles and breathed so shallowly that his diaphragm and his ribs seemed nonexistent. Smith was number one in his favorite contacts, right at the top of the screen. I was number two. She was number three. This was a simple fact that had tenuously gotten me through many quiet, empty nights, as pathetic as that sounds. He was number one in mine, even above my mother. Mama had laughed and made fun of me when she found out, and I just turned red and looked down, but didn’t change it. If anything ever happened to me, I wanted him at my side. I wanted him to know before anyone else.

It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. My phone is saturated and tangled in weeds and plastic soda rings, buried in filth at the bottom of a polluted river, but it seems he that he is the first to know after all. If things had gone differently, if I had cowed under the weight of my mother’s laughing implications and reordered them, would it be my mother, now, suffering nightmares and tremors, sick to her stomach?

Smith answered his phone on the second ring, oblivious to everything. “Hey, bro,” he said, and I could picture him, still in bed, coffee in hand, the television across the room blaring Cartoon Network. “Are you still in Oakland?”

“Yeah, uh,” Jade said, and hunched his shoulders, eyes flicking around the room for an escape that wasn’t coming. “Remember when I asked you if you had Dave’s hotel number, and you told me not to worry?”

Silence on both ends. Jade swallowed hard, and I could imagine Smith gritting his teeth and listing possibilities in his head. Eventually, Smith said weakly, “He still in Philly, huh?”

Jade did not answer. Instead, he stared at his knees, where taut denim had become soft and was beginning to give way.

“Listen,” Smith said, “how about I call? You can stay up there with Adam a couple more days, and I’ll make the phone calls, find Hunter, and we’ll meet you up there tomorrow.”

Jade drew in a sharp breath and shook his head. Beside him, Adam was leaning close, straining to hear both sides of the conversation. “And what, just wait for you to get here? Come on, I don’t want to sit here imagining possibilities. Just give me the number and me or Adam will do it.”

Another stretch of silence. The corridor was beginning to fill again, business consultants in pristine suits, families with rucksacks and duffel bags and children. Stars were beginning to glint in the deepening sky. “Fine,” Smith relented. “I’ll text it to you.”

“Thank you,” Jade said softly, almost drowned out by the noise welling around them. “Talk to you soon.”

“Wait—Jade, before you hang up!” Smith said it quickly but with noticeable reticence. He took another breath like he was preparing for a Polar Bear Plunge. “If he’s not there—and I’m not saying he won’t be, but just… you know. In case. If he’s not there, then call the cops.”

Jade nodded, but didn’t say anything. Smith, despite his distance, seemed to get the point. “I’m in LA. I’ll call Hunter now, and the two of us will be up tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” Jade turned the phone off and dropped in his lap. Four and a half minutes later, it buzzed with Smith’s promised text, but neither he nor Adam moved to retrieve it.


End file.
